


look upon your children

by napoleonscomet



Series: look upon your children [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22951000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/napoleonscomet/pseuds/napoleonscomet
Summary: Leia shook her head and came up to the railing, standing next to him close enough for their shoulders to brush. She pointed to a spot to the left and nearly overhead. “ That one’s Alderaan. We’re so far away the light is still there—it’ll take millennia before you’d be able to see what happened from Christophsis. From here, it still looks exactly like it always has.”She felt him look down at her. “How are you?” Luke said.“You know not to ask me that.”
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker
Series: look upon your children [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649422
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	look upon your children

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'wilderland' by anais mitchell.
> 
> kind of au; borrowing plot points from the x-wing books as to be found on a cursory wookie search

_7aby._

The night before the Coruscant campaign shipped out from the newly-dubbed New Republic Command on Christophsis, the strike team threw a party in the command center of the building the Rogues had claimed as their own. A planet largely devastated in one of the worst conflicts of the Clone Wars, the once-capital city had fallen into a ghost town by the time the Alliance had claimed most of the Outer and Mid Rims below the Corellian Run, many of the largest buildings left as the clone barracks they’d been converted into when the Old Republic had moved on. Most of the equipment still worked, and with so many of the Alliance transport ships destroyed or limping by the last gasps of the war and still more destroyed at Endor, the empty and militarized cityscape had seemed as good a place as any to set down temporary roots.

And temporary they would be, if the strike team succeeded. It was small enough to make Leia nervous as she watched them standing around the makeshift bar—half of what remained of Rogue Squadron, more or less, and a few of the Alliance’s best intelligence operatives, among them her own oldest friend Winter, laughing over glasses of Wes and Hobbie’s best moonshine, making introductions to new members of the team.

Winter spotted her as she walked in, brought over a glass. “Congratulations,” her friend greeted her warmly. “Provisional council?”

Leia nodded, a little more tersely than she’d meant to. The provisional council consisted of those members of Alliance High Command who’d come from political careers, whether in the Old Republic’s senate, or the Empire’s. They didn’t really exist outside of Alliance Command in practice, but its formation had been an act of preparation—to signal that a new government was ready and waiting to transition the galaxy out of the civil war that had consumed it for so long, to speak into existence the peace that the new government would preside over. And she had been appointed to it almost unanimously, the youngest member by at least twenty years.

“You don’t seem excited about it,” Winter remarked.

Leia shook her head. “It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just that I’ve spent so long fighting, living one day to the next, that I’m not sure how to slow down enough to run a galaxy.”

Winter laughed, grey eyes twinkling, and pressed the glass into Leia’s hand. “You can think about that after we take back Coruscant. For now, let’s celebrate. We’re about to do it, Leia. Everything we’ve fought for, everything your—your father fought for. It’s about to happen—celebrate it.”

Leia took the glass, feeling the chill of the surface and the liquor inside, took a sip. It burned incredibly, tasted like a dozen other Alliance parties she’s been to, cheap liquor smuggled onto base or brewed in the dormitories. Like Yavin, Bandomeer, Ryloth, Hoth, the bases she’d lived on for months at a time blending together, the inconstancy anchored by the traditions that followed them from world to world, and across an ever-changing cadre of people. “To Coruscant, then,” she said, and Winter raised her glass to Leia’s.

“To Coruscant. Are you seeing us off?” Leia nodded, and Winter embraced her friend, pressing her cheek to Leia’s hair. “I’ll see you then.” Tycho Celchu called her name, and she turned and went back to the bar.

Leia sighed, looked down at her drink. She took another sip of it and set it down on the ledge running the length of the wall, then made her way to the edge of the room, where the door to a service hallway stood. There was a balcony down the hall, she knew, and she made her way to it, praying no one had seen her slip out.

It wasn’t yet autumn on Christophsis, but the planet’s climate ran colder than Alderaan’s and even after all this time Leia still wasn’t used to variable temperatures. She shivered as she stepped outside, grateful for the flush already beginning to spread through her body.

Luke was already on the railing, looking out at the city and the starlight glinting through the over-clear atmosphere and off the cerulean glass tile that made it up. He turned when he heard the door open, and smiled to see her. “I’ve never seen a city so big,” he said, and she grinned.

“Wait until you see Coruscant,” she replied. “The whole surface is city, grey steel and neon lights. It’s always as bright as day.”

“That sounds horrible,” he said. “I would miss being able to see the stars.” He pointed to a spot of light just over the horizon. “I’m not positive—I haven’t checked the local star charts—but I’m pretty sure that one is Tatooine.”

“How does it feel to be so close?” she asked.

“Strange,” he admitted. “I thought I had left it for good when I left with Ben—then again when I left before Endor. Now it’s so close I could touch it—a few hours’ journey, and I don’t want to go back.” He paused, and smiled. “You’re not going to say something about how I know where it is without looking at the charts?” he teased.

Leia shook her head and came up to the railing, standing next to him close enough for their shoulders to brush. She pointed to a spot to the left and nearly overhead. “That one’s Alderaan. We’re so far away the light is still there—it’ll take millennia before you’d be able to see what happened from Christophsis. From here, it still looks exactly like it always has.”

She felt him look down at her. “How are you?” Luke said.

“You know not to ask me that.”

“I can’t feel you right now,” he replied. “Even before I knew...anything, about us, about the Force—I could feel you in it. Even when you were shielding. But I’m not getting anything from you.”

Her retort died before it made it to her tongue. She trusted Luke, more absolutely than anyone else, and certainly more immediately. She sank against him, and his arm came up to wrap around her shoulders. “You know they appointed me to the provisional council.”

“Han told me—congratulations,” he said, and she winced.

“I don’t...” she said. “I don’t know how to do it.”

“With the same grace and poise you’ve lead the Alliance.”

“This is different,” Leia replied. “It’s...it’s _ruling_ , not just commanding. It’s what I was raised to do, and now that it’s in front of me—I don’t know if I can.” He hummed, an invitation to continue. She sighed. “Alderaan had a hereditary monarchy,” she told him. “ _Princess_ isn’t just a symbolic title. I was the queen’s daughter, and I was raised to be queen. I should be queen now, technically, should have inherited it from my mother. But no one offered it to me, and I didn’t ask for it.

I hated the monarchy when I was a kid. Argued with my parents for hours about it—the one thing we fought about that could make me cry. I thought it was archaic, I planned to refuse the title when it was passed down to me, hated myself for the fact that I couldn’t take _princess_ off from in front of my name. I never, ever wanted to be any kind of royalty—never wanted to rule. Wanted to slough that birthright off. But as soon as—the second Alderaan was gone, I became unable to ever stop being Princess Leia. Both to the survivors who used me as a figurehead, an emblem of a leader who never led them, and to myself—as I cling desperately to any fragments of my culture I still can have. But ruling is stepping more into the title than I ever wanted, ever expected to.”

“You’re afraid of stepping into your title?”

She shook her head. “It’s...I don’t know how to explain it. I’m just not sure I’m ready to slow down.” She lowered her voice. “I’m afraid to slow down,” she admitted. “I’m afraid of what will happen to me when I’m not. You know. Doing all of this. When I have to surrender to other people defining me again. I don’t know if I’ll be able to deal with the pity, the publicity, the expectation. Or what I’ll start to think about when I have a moment to breathe.”

“I don’t know what’ll happen either,” Luke replied. “I don’t know what will happen when people find out about my—our—father. I know they will, it’s just a matter of time.”

“Do you want to hide it?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’m certainly not going to go around telling people. But I’m at peace with the fact that it’ll get out someday.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” He started. “Luke, if anyone found out that I’m his daughter it would ruin my life. I’m not a Jedi, I can’t retreat into the Force and meditate on forgiveness. I don’t have that kind of luxury—my entire life is in the Rebellion, and once it’s gone I’ll have nothing left but the Republic. I can’t—I need this secret kept.”

“You don’t have his name,” Luke pointed out. “That’s one more step people would need to put together, and a much harder one.”

“Would they?” she asked. “Are we going to tell people we’re brother and sister?”

“It would be an easier secret to keep,” he admitted, but reluctantly. “I can’t imagine anyone would ever piece together your birth parentage we didn’t.”

“But what would happen if it came out years down the line? What would happen then?”

“Then we weather that storm when it comes,” Luke replied. “It’s not a lie that you’re my best friend. You have been since Yavin almost.” Leia nodded. She had felt at ease with Luke almost immediately, had been attuned to him long before she had had an explanation for it. She’d never been able to put it into words, but their relationship had always been one of the purest and most uncomplicated of her life.

“So we put everything we’ve got into keeping my lineage a secret,” she said. “And let come what may for you.”

“Something like that.”

They stood in silence for a long moment before Leia broke it. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?” he asked.

“How you’re so at peace with this. With him.”

His voice is very quiet when he replies. “He gave his life for me.”

“That doesn’t change what he did before he died.”

“No,” said Luke. “But it means there was some good in him all along. That he never lost that core of Anakin Skywalker.”

“So it wasn’t Vader who killed billions of people,” she replied flatly, “it was Anakin. That changes everything.”

“Ben and Yoda told me that there’s no coming back from the dark side—not ever. ‘Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.’ But this proves—that they were _wrong_. That there is a way back from the dark side. It proves to me that there’s such a thing as redemption.”

“You can change your mind,” Leia argued, “but that doesn’t change what you did. That’s not redemption, that’s just feeling guilty.”

“It’s remorse. It’s atonement.”

“Luke, he blew up my homeworld,” she said. “He held me against his body and made me watch them do it. You can’t atone for that. Not ever.”

“He tried,” said Luke. “In the end.”

“By what, dying?”

“In dying, he stopped the war. How would Endor have gone if he hadn’t died? Where would we be now? Would there be a second Death Star running around the galaxy making everything we’ve fought for for five years meaningless? How many thousands or millions more would have died? He stopped the war, and he saved my life. Because he loved me—because he _chose_ to love me. I can choose to love him in return without changing anything of what he’s done.”

“I can feel,” she said, “every being that has ever died because of him. Is that the Force? Is it the Force that he gave me? I don’t want it. I don’t want his blood in my veins, and I don’t want to feel the pain he caused every second of my life.”

“I feel it too,” Luke replied. “All of them—everything. But around the suffering and death, suffusing it and swirling around it and outshining it is all of the life in the universe. Isn’t that a trade-off?”

“I don’t think we’ll ever agree on this,” said Leia. “But I don’t want to fight about it. Not tonight.”

“Alright.”

“Tomorrow Coruscant,” she breathed, turning her focus from where it was fixed just below the skyline back out to the clear clear night sky.

“Have you tried Wes and Hobbie’s latest?” Luke joked. “I’m not sure they’ll make it to Coruscant with the hangover it’ll give them.”

“I have,” she protested. “You’re just not used to Alliance parties.”

“I’ve been to as many as you have,” he replied. “You just spend too much time around Han.”

“I’ll give you that,” Leia acquiesced.

“How are you two?” he asked. “Any plans for after the war?”

She shook her head. “Nope,” she replied. “We’re just taking it one day at a time. Seeing what tomorrow will bring.”

“Coruscant, hopefully,” said Luke.

“Yeah,” Leia replied, nestling her head against her brother’s shoulder. “Coruscant.”


End file.
